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Wednesday, October 1, 2008

It's October and for the first time in 13 years the Yankees won't be playing baseball this month. It was a disappointing season to say the least. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be taking a look back at the individuals that took part in the 2008 Yankees campaign, offering up some opinions and assigning each person a grade. I hope to do at least one person a day so make sure to check back. And please feel free to add your own thoughts and comments.

Today's look back at 2008 is Jorge Posada.

Jorge missed about 2/3 of the year with a bum right shoulder. The Yankees definitely felt the impact of not having Jorge in the lineup on a daily basis. It's very difficult to replace a catcher who hits as well as Jorge. In 2007, Jorgie had an outstanding year, hitting .338 and driving in 90 runs. You can't replace that. The loss of Jorge's production was one of the biggest reasons why the Yankees scored 179 runs less this year than they did in 2007.

Jorge appeared in 51 games, hitting .268 and driving in only 22 runs. His numbers were well below his numbers from 2007 and were also lower than his career averages. It's hard to say how much his shoulder problems had to do with his subpar performance. One thing the bum shoulder did affect was his ability to throw out base-stealers. Jorge allowed 34 stolen bases in 41 attempts, meaning he threw out runners only 17.1% of the time, which would have been the lowest caught stealing percentage in the league for all catchers that qualified. His CS % dropped from 37.3% in 2006 to 23.9% in 2007, to 17.1% in 2008. Jorge's arm has been a growing concern in recent years and with the Rays and Red Sox fielding lineups with lots of speed, the Yankees really need to take a look at other options for catcher.

Overall it was a pretty disappointing year for Posada. As I mentioned above, it's hard to measure the impact that his shoulder trouble had on his performance. Had he been healthy all year, I wouldn't have expected the digression in his numbers that we saw. I can only assume that his injury had a lot to do with his subpar performance.

Taking everything into account, I can only really give Jorge a grade of incomplete. It's hard to say what he would have done had he been healthy. Feel free to let me know what you think or how you would have graded Jorge's 2008 season.

If you want to check out my last 2008 look back, it was on Joe Girardi. Next up: Jose Molina